


Family Photos

by inheritanceofgeek



Series: Reconciliation [5]
Category: Batgirl (Comics), Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types, DCU (Comics)
Genre: (But I love him and he is my smol son), Bruce Wayne is So Done, Bruce Wayne is a Good Parent, Damian Wayne is a Little Shit, Family Bonding, Family Fluff, Father-Son Relationship, Fluff, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-26
Updated: 2019-01-26
Packaged: 2019-10-16 15:01:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,648
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17551877
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/inheritanceofgeek/pseuds/inheritanceofgeek
Summary: In which Damian gains a lesson in how to 'hide in plain sight', and Bruce gets a hint of what two of his Robins get up to on their nights off.OrHow social media reacts to Stephanie and Tim's date to the fair.





	Family Photos

**Author's Note:**

> RandomReader13 suggested I write the fall out to their date from "One Robin, Two Robins, Three Robins, More!" and whilst maybe this isn't what they had in mind, I'm such a sucker for Damian and for Bat Family Bonding....

Gotham was known as the city of darkness, where the worst of the worst gathered to commit their crimes. Cruelty and malice were a sickness that spread through the cracks of every broken paving stone, every abandoned building, every smashed in window. But that was not what Gotham was. It was a city of light, that proved hope could be found in the worst of circumstances. Even in the most derelict parts of the city, where no one dared to ventured, there would always be light shining through, in the windows of clinics, the glow of students’ laptops, in the flickering of a street lamp as it refused to burn out. There would always be light in Gotham.

Nobody understood this better than Bruce Wayne. If only because,  _ god _ he was tired, who the fuck was shining that light in his eyes? He had black out curtains for a  _ reason _ ! He didn't want to be forced to face the dawn, he was  _ bat _ man not  _ bird _ man!

“Father, Father wake up! I have vital information that you will be required to act upon immediately.”

Of course, Robin. Why did he have to name his protégé after a dawn bird? Maybe he could go back in time and persuade Dick to call himself 'Owl’? Hmmm, then again maybe not, too close to the ‘Gray Son’. Badger maybe? Or what were those fat green parrots called? Kakapos? They were nocturnal.

“Father! It's important!” He felt himself being shaken vigorously. Well, he'd made his dawn bird based bed, now he might as well lie in it. 

“Damian, you can stop, I'm awake, I'm awake.” he rubbed the sleep from his eyes and sat up. God the sun was bright. 

“Oh, good,” said Damian, sitting back on his heels. He'd clambered onto the bed in his enthusiasm, and was now looking a little sheepish. “I bought you a coffee.” He pointed at the side table where, indeed, there was a mug waiting for him. Bruce hesitated for a moment before taking a sip. Damian had not perfected the art of coffee the way his brothers had, but terrible coffee was better than no coffee.

“Thank you,” he smiled through purses lips as he tried to force down the burnt, luke warm liquid “much appreciated.” 

Damian seemed to relax a little, a small grin spreading across his face at the praise. “You're welcome Father. I thought it best to bring you something, to soften the news.”

“And what news is that, Damian?” Okay, the boy at least had his full attention. It couldn't be too serious, because then Alfred or Dick would have come to wake him. But it also had to be serious enough to make Damian  _ believe _ that waking him up was worth it. He had been very clear not being woken up before noon without due reasoning. 

“I'm sorry Father, but it's Drake. You're going to have to have him dealt with. Fired at least, if not banished to another city.” 

“Not this again Damian,” moaned Bruce, rubbing his hand down his face “I know you two don't get on, but that doesn't mean you have to--” 

“Look!” Cried Damian, pushing his phone into Bruce’s face “He broke the rules!”

Bruce carefully took the phone and squinted down at it. God, it was so bright. Who made phone screens this bright? His eyes adjusted though, and he finally properly registered what he was looking at. It was some sort of social media feed. With hundreds of messages reading variations along the line of “OMG @Tim_WayneCEO  _ really is _ Robin!” 

That got Bruce suddenly more awake than ever before. He started frantically scrolling, trying to find an explanation. Had there been an accident and he'd ended up in the main hospital and not Leslie's clinic? Had he been kidnapped by one of their enemies and had his identity revealed to the media? What was happening and why wasn’t he informed about it  _ immediately _ !? 

“Of course, they're all incorrect.  _ I'm _ Robin,  _ he's _ just Red Robin, a pale imitation of the real thing. However, I suppose the general populace are just as ignorant as ever.” Damian huffed, clicking his tongue. 

“I don't-- I don't understand…” murmured Bruce, scrolling through the various twitter feeds, trying to find an answer “What-- what happened? He wasn't even on patrol last night…” 

Damian shuffled around and sat next to Bruce, taking the phone from him and bringing up various web pages and chat groups. “Tt, first, Drake shirks his duties, now he does this. As I said Father, he needs to be dealt with.” he clicked play on a video and handed it back to him. 

It was some sort of amateur footage from an event, the angle was bad, and the sound quality incredibly poor what with all the cheering and shouting. But there could be no mistaking the sight of his son in a…  _ very _ poor approximation of a Robin outfit, performing incredibly basic martial arts moves. The crowd didn't seem to be able to know the difference though, apparently being able to catch and throw something was worthy of applause these days. He scrolled further through the feed, finding similar videos all tagging Tim's official handle. The one he only used for promotion of the Wayne Enterprise brand, posting pictures of Dinners with important clients, updates on their latest developments, signal boosting their various charities etc. Everyone was on twitter now days, even Bruce. Though it was run by his PA, of course. Everyone had one, that is, except Damian.

“Damian…” he said warily “where did you find this?”

“Grayson sent it out as a group text this morning, Batgirl was with him at the event too. Look! She even posted this,” he showed Bruce another photo, this one seemed to be from Stephanie's Instagram. He'd had to have words with her before about the dangers of social media in their line of work. The city might look beautiful from on top of a church tower, but an average person was not meant to be able to  _ get _ up there to begin with. Stephanie had clearly been busy yesterday, having taken the night off as well. Curious that it would be the same night as Tim, usually they coordinated their down time so as to not leave the streets too unattended. He'd have to remind them of their duties later, so this wouldn't happen again. 

Her feed was full of pictures from the fair that had been in town this past fortnight. Pictures from the top of the Ferris wheel, outside of rollercoasters and a few of the people she'd met. Wait, was that one of all four flashes? He paused on the image, reading the caption. 

 

_ Collection of the best costumes of the night! Sorry if I didn't get your handle!! Let me know who you are and I'll tag you! _

 

There were several grouped within it, and he flipped through it carefully. He knew superhero costumes were always popular, but even this seemed a little excessive. Was that one of Supergirl and Batgirl making out? Since when had her and Kara been an item? And why go public about it  _ now _ ? 

“It gets worse father,” nodded Damian solemnly “Just look at her profile picture. I think we may have to fire her too. Although please do not banish her, she still has to complete her degree and it would be inconvenient to transfer now.” 

Bruce clicked to enlarge it and couldn't help the splutter of laughter that came out of his mouth. Stephanie had changed her profile picture to one of herself in an almost deliberately bad early Spoiler costume, and a girl who was in a surprisingly accurate version of her Robin uniform. Seeing pictures of Stephanie as Robin usually made his gut churn in the same way pictures of Jason did, but this time he couldn't help but smile.  

“Now, I know that you are no doubt angry Father, and you have done an excellent job so far of calming your rage.” said Damian, carefully. Bruce would be annoyed at him, if he didn’t recognise it as the same tone he used on Damian. The boy was trying at least, even if he was being a bit of a nuisance at the moment. “So just remember, killing people is never the answer.” Damian eyed Bruce warily, before clicking away from the instagram page to pull up another photo, this time a selfie of Stephanie and Tim together, her as Spoiler and him as Robin, grinning broadly and sharing a box of popcorn. Oh well that explained it then. 

“Damian,” said Bruce, calmly “this is just one of Stephanie's jokes. She's making it very obvious that herself and Tim are the former Spoiler and Robin, and in doing so, proving that they cannot be.” 

Damian scrunched up his face “But everyone on the internet is insisting that Drake is Robin! They do indeed know the truth!” 

“No, they don't,” he said calmly “They're in on the joke as well.”

“Well it's not a very funny one!” cried Damian “This kind of behaviour is down right dangerous. Look, they're publishing side-by-side photos too!” he stole back phone back and bought them up, and yeah, those were two blurry photos of Tim side by side, one of him at fourteen and one at nineteen. Bruce couldn't help but feel a surge of affection as he looked at them, Tim really had grown a lot in the last year. He still looked young for his age (other than the eyes which would always be far too old) but he'd lost his puppy fat, and he was no longer as gangly as he once was, having finally grown into himself. His seven years of intense physical training were also showing, and he wondered vaguely how long it would be before the papers started putting listing  _ Tim _ as Gotham's Most Eligible Bachelor, instead of Dick. Of course they all thought he was still engaged to Ms. Fox, so probably never. 

“Damian, please calm down, this isn't the first time this has happened to us. Come, I'll show you.” He hawled himself out of bed, grabbing a T-Shirt from off the floor and scooting his son out of the room, and towards the family lounge. He rifled through the various shelves, and pulled out an embossed photo album. Truth be told, he'd not looked at it in a while.

He patted the seat next to him, and Damian cautiously joined him. He nervously looked between the album and Bruce, as if expecting it to contain some sort of weapon. “This is the album we, that is to say, Alfred, used to keep before everything went digital, and even afterwards, though it has fallen by the wayside a little. Look,” he opened up the page and there on the first page was Dick, age 9, grinning up at the camera dressed in a batman costume for Halloween. 

Damian frowned “And you allowed this behaviour? Father, I must say, I know that Grayson came to you through difficult circumstances, but there was no reason to be so--”

“It was funny, Damian. At the time, I will admit, I wasn't especially pleased, but it made Alfred laugh, which as you know is a feat all of its own, so I allowed it. Dick and his friends went out together, and met a whole sea of other Batmen, and Flashes, and Supermen.” He carefully turned the pages, one by one, allowing Damian to see what else was there. Dick's first Hanukkah with him and Kate, quickly learning that the cousins too their dreidel  _ very _ seriously. He should probably find a way to try and patch things up with Kate… she was the only blood family he had left, after all. 

Then there was Christmas, and Dick surrounded by mountains of wrapping paper, grinning from ear to ear as he held onto the latest computer console. He may have spoiled him a little that year. It had been Bruce's first  _ proper _ Christmas too, since his parents had died. It was usually just him and Alfred, but Dick had given him even more reasons to smile that year. 

They flipped through various other photos, Damian holding Bruce's hand still as he studied each one more carefully. He was mouthing the captions as he read them, as if trying to memorise each photo. 

They hit the photos of Jason when he first joined them. Dick and him had not been on speaking terms at the time, but he’d later gone back and given him some prints of his photos with the Titans. It meant that the Halloween that Jason dressed as Wonder Woman was paired with the time Dick had gone as Robin. The costume looked ridiculous on the nineteen-year-old, which he supposed was rather the point. All the Titans seemed to be wearing their old costumes, and it was slightly unnerving to see Roy in the yellow cap. Especially now, after all that had happened. 

“They-- they went out in  _ public _ like this?” whispered Damian in quiet horror. “But, here,” he pointed at the photo of Dick “This was taken only a couple of years after he became Nightwing! What if someone recognised him from before?” 

“Then they shook it off as a joke, Damian.” said Bruce, pushing back his son’s hair “I’m not saying that what they’re doing is wise or without risk. But it’s the sort of mistakes I’ve come to accept as par for the course for raising you all. And hey, look here,” he grinned flipping to the more recent photos “You think your brothers are bad, here's a photo of when Clark Kent went as superman to the Mayor’s Annual Metropolis Costume Ball.” 

Damian let out a gasp of abject horror as he snatched the book away to stare at it. “This man is more of an idiot than I thought! How did they not know? It’s a cheap costume, I can see that but, how do they not  _ know _ ?”

“Because” explained Bruce, patiently “they don’t want to know, and they don’t want to trust what they’re seeing. Everyone is ‘hiding in plain sight’.” 

“So, should I dress up as Robin next time? If I want to stop people from thinking I am Robin?”

Bruce smile got a little weaker “Damian, part of it is wearing a bad approximation of your costume. I somehow do not think you could manage that.” 

Damian hummed thoughtfully “Yes, that is true. I could never lower myself to Drake’s standard of dress. Perhaps I could be Batman though?” he looked up a little cautiously “I mean, I’m informed that it is only right to dress up for Halloween, and plenty of Gotham children dress as Batman…” 

“We’ll see,” smiled Bruce, going to close the book and put it back on the shelf, but Damian stayed his hand. 

“No, I want to see more. Please?” he looked up at Bruce with big green, hopeful eyes. One day soon he would learn how to weaponise them, and on that day Bruce would be damned.

“Sure,” smiled Bruce, sitting back down and resting the album on his lap. Damian crawled into the space between Bruce’s arms and tucked himself in tight against him. Bruce felt his heart grow in size, every second he thought he could not love his son more, he was proven wrong again. 

Despite what he’d said to Damian, he’d still need to find a way to let Stephanie and Tim know to not pull that kind of manoeuvre again. Once was fine, the press would soon forget about it as soon as a dancing squirrel appeared. But they could never let it happen again! And no, having official social media accounts would not help either. They were vigilantes, not pop stars. Just because the flashes did it, didn't mean they should too!

**Author's Note:**

> Enjoyed this? Let me know via kudos/comments or on tumblr where I'm mrsmarymorstan =)


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